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nForce MCP Network Driver Working On FreeBSD 5.1

Posted by timothy on from the integrated-parts dept.

Dan writes "Quinton Dolan is in the final stages of porting the NVidia Linux nForce MCP network driver to FreeBSD-5.1. He is looking for users/developers with access to this hardware for testing help. The driver currently appears to be stable on his hardware (an MSI K7N420 Pro), although he hasn't done much stress testing, nor does he have access to an nForce2 based motherboard to test."

26 comments

  1. Wow! 20 minutes by JCMay · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    It's been 20 minutes since this was posted and nobody's replied. I suppose you could say that nobody cares and therefore infer that *BSD is dying. :)

  2. Hmmmm.... by greenhide · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From his post:
    If you are interested in testing this, email me offline.

    Oh, okay. How do you want me to do that? Use smoke signals over TCP/IP?

    I've never used *BSD, but all the propoganda I've read says that it has a built in Linux emulator. Wouldn't that make it easy to port?

    Also, why bother using a card that requires some special driver? Every run of the mill Ethernet card that I've thrown in a box works just fine without any tweaking or downloading special drivers.

    --
    Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
    1. Re:Hmmmm.... by trippinonbsd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've never used *BSD, but all the propoganda I've read says that it has a built in Linux emulator. Wouldn't that make it easy to port?

      FreeBSD has something that is even better than linux emulation. It natively understands and maps linux system calls to their FreeBSD equivilent, which in the earlier days of linux allowed FreeBSD to execute linux binarys faster than linux could. This doesnt make it much easier to port over drivers because drivers are not normal simple executable files.

      Also, why bother using a card that requires some special driver? Every run of the mill Ethernet card that I've thrown in a box works just fine without any tweaking or downloading special drivers.

      Why bother ever using anything onboard with this attitude? No need to use that crazy onboard ide when i could add in a nice 3ware 8 port card...

    2. Re:Hmmmm.... by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not emulation, it's binary compatibility. When a Linux binary is loaded, the kernel loads the Linux system call map and uses that instead of the FreeBSD on. IOW, the binary is running natively, without any emulation layer.

      In the early days of FreeBSD 4.x, you could actually run Linux binaries faster on FreeBSD, and in many cases, it would run stabler too. (This is why the CGI in The Matrix was done using Linux apps on FreeBSD servers.)

      But, this only works for userland apps. You can't run Linux kernel modules (drivers) inside the FreeBSD kernel.

    3. Re:Hmmmm.... by endx7 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've never used *BSD, but all the propoganda I've read says that it has a built in Linux emulator. Wouldn't that make it easy to port?

      It's a driver, and drivers live in kernelspace. The FreeBSD kernel (and others) can only appear to be 'linux' to the userland, and not to stuff that lives inside the kernel.
    4. Re:Hmmmm.... by xA40D · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Also, why bother using a card that requires some special driver? Every run of the mill Ethernet card that I've thrown in a box works just fine without any tweaking or downloading special drivers.

      Well, if you get offered a couple of motherboards with the nForce chipset onboard at a really good price, it'd be nice if you could actually do somethng with them.

      Besides, somebody had to write the drivers for all of them run-of-the-mill cards at some point. Or should we just have one card with one driver? Don't think so. Different chipsets have different features, so it's nice to have drivers written to get the most out of each set.

      --
      Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
    5. Re:Hmmmm.... by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 1

      Oh, okay. How do you want me to do that? Use smoke signals over TCP/IP?
      No, H20-IP

    6. Re:Hmmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bought a bunch of Promise IDE PCI cards as spares due to the flakiness of the VIA IDE chipsets.

      Then Hedrick got all pissy with Promise and stopped making their driver work in newer kernels.

      It's like having our own Theo for linux.

    7. Re:Hmmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your ignorance is astounding.

    8. Re:Hmmmm.... by DaHat · · Score: 1

      the reason you want drivers for such a 'card' is because the nic is embeded. As truly happy owner of one such card... I can firmly say I am inlove, and see no reason why I should have to find a pci card to add in when I run BSD on it.

      --
      Help Brendan pay off his student loans
  3. NForce2 proprietary? by albalbo · · Score: 1

    I have an NForce2 based motherboard. As far as I know, the NFarce is a proprietary chipset. Under Linux 2.6, I can get the sound working, but that's it. I got myself an ATi card for accelerated graphics using a free software driver, and put a Intel eepro100 type network card for networking.

    I would love to take out the network card personally, but as far as I know there is no free driver for it. Is this person working on porting the closed-source driver?

    --
    "Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
    1. Re:NForce2 proprietary? by rakarnik · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, he is simply porting the open source wrapper for the Linux binary module to the BSD kernel, as he mentions in the article. Reverse engineering the supplied binary module is prohibited by the license under which it is supplied.

      At this point, we have no idea what chip is used in the NForce2 ethernet. Possible suspects such as AMD8111e and pcnet32 have been tried without success.

      I assume that Nvidia has some kind of licensing agreement that prevents them from releasing specs; otherwise, why in the world would you guard the specs for a damn ethernet card?

      --
      Genebrew
    2. Re:NForce2 proprietary? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Look at it from the point of view of a businessman,
      *BSD is dying
  4. Re:Wow! 20 minutes by endx7 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Narrr! I was hoping the '*BSD is dying' posts were dying.

  5. Re:Wow! 20 minutes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sorry were we suppose to immediatly fill the board with SCO/Microsoft bashing and general off-topic discussion to make this BSD threads look like the Linux ones?

    No thanks. We're busy doing real work. :)

  6. Because this is the information economy by konmaskisin · · Score: 1

    and the knowledge based society ...

    Which means you take steps to prevent sharing of information and knowledge whenever you can. I would caution against trying to reverse engineer this equipment since it is now against the law (DMCA). If developing garage door opener equipment that is interoperable is viewed as a violation of the DMCA then this certainly would be.

    Better yet is to simply not ever use Nvidia hardware: it places your whole business/organization at legal risk becasue you never know who might try using it with Linux or BSD.

    1. Re:Because this is the information economy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea, switching platforms to save $5 on a NIC is good advice.

      Oh, and I fucked your sister last night.

  7. bad idea? by jack+in+the+mac · · Score: 0

    i dont think you really want MCP on your computer

    do you?

    --
    Joy!peffpwpc
    1. Re:bad idea? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know!

      Microsoft Certified Professionals have only passed one core exam!

  8. Re:Wow! 20 minutes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    haiku

    flask of ripe urine
    pressed to bsd lips
    bsd drink up

  9. Nforce 2 by stewwy · · Score: 1

    I've a soltek frn2 board, I've been trying to get the net port on the board to work with Suse linux trying to ftp install it, a bit hard when the driver has to be downloaded and installed seperately! I've been doing a bit of investigation of the hardware and one of the strings that came up was 'xerox' I can't remember how I got it (I sort of gave up and bought a card) If I can reproduce it I'll post the string etc